Cranebuilders
‘Sometimes You Hear Through Someone Else’ (Skinny
Dog Records)
(April '05)
This modest quintet once hit John
Peel’s Festive 50 with a single, ‘Your Song’, a scintillating
tribute to a beautiful singer (“it feels like heaven is right
before my eyes, when you sing”). This recent album touches
on heartbreak, agoraphobia and even old age, but at its core is a similarly
life-affirming love of music. The music itself ranges from piano-led
laments to choppy rock ‘n’ roll, with a noisy undertow which
never threatens to swamp the delicate male vocals. For example, ‘Fallen
Arches’ has some good background sounds, guitars gently stroked
and emitting a purr - although its extended metaphor of “head
as light bulb” is a touch too introspective– while more
healthily evocative lyrics tell of “the woman in my arms and
on the end of my lips,” on the plaintively rocking ‘So
What Could I Do?’, all Velvet Underground guitar and baggy rhythm.
When they go onto the dance-floor to flop their fringes, they do so
with shuffling feet: “always ill at ease in a public place,
and I feel like I wanna die,” but with music on the band’s
side, they “begin to have a good time”. It’s
a quietly exciting midpoint between the nerdy British mutterings of
the Wedding Present or Pulp, and the American atmospherics of Low or
Yo La Tengo. And it’s all carried out with a mature craftsmanship
– ‘My Little Misery’ hints at a big British Sea Power-style
finale, but pulls back the noise to reveal a slim voice just whispering,
“I love you”. Enough said!
